Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

IMHO [Humble --I slay me!], people tend to go at this the wrong way. You want to worry about the bit where people get on and off ships, then about the ships. We moderns tend to hear the word "port" and freeze up, whereas in old times, people couldn't leave it to civil engineering.

The Mediterranean, for example, has few sheltered harbours, so you can't just drop anchor and lighter off your cargo, or tie up to a pier. It does have scads of well-scoured beaches with gentle inclines. A long, shallow, but relatively wide ship can just beach itself and be about its bulk-breaking way in so many places that it just doesn't make sense to use anything else, for the most part. It's difficult to beach yourself under sail, so oars make a great deal of sense.

Presto, galley.

Atlantic beaches exist, but tend to have a much steeper gradiant, and tides that will refloat your boat whether or not you're ready. If you're going to operate from a beach, you want a vessel that's short enough to haul up above the tideline, and since you're using brute, pulley-assisted force, you don't worry about the lines of the vessel so much. To get cargo volume, you end up with a short and tubby boat.

The Atlantic also has plenty of tidal rivers. Tide's are like nature's railways. They carry huge loads up the river and down, no human effort required. All you need is guys with poles at bow and stern to fend off trouble. "Vikings" would go up to Hamburg, Emden, Antwerp, York and London and Rouen this way.

It also has plenty of estuarine waters, and vast stretches of sand-dune fronted coast broken by small rivers and canals giving access to inland ports. Docking at a Frisian thorpe or getting to Ghent or Norwich(?) requires exquisite manoevrability and a shallow draft. You'd be far better off carrying a few lighters of our own, which can be used as lifeboats. Notice that you can also throw a cable to those lighters and let them tow you. This way, you can build a high-sided vessel that can't be conveniently rowed, and still get the advantages of oarred transport.

Finally, carried lighters can be used in the cheapest and most efficient kind of fishing, the inshore fishery. You can sail into a Saint John's Harbour, drop off boats and fishermen, and let them do the work.

(Then at the end of the season you can sell them to the Indians and tell any pesky clericals at home that they died of some horrible disease. given what labour gang refugees faced when they got home, they'll probably be grateful for a chance at a new life as a "Skraeling.")

More, although not that much more information can be found in the medieval volumes of Conway's History of the Ship, and especially the technical chapters of the first volume of N. A. M. Rodger's history of the navies of Great Britain, Sovereign of the Seas. And in the Admiralty voumes on wartime ship construction coverinng amphibious vessels, since the designers of LSTs and the like confronted the modern version of the "galley" problem and came up with some remarkably similar solutions.

The idea of an east-to-west trans-Atlantic slave trade in European "vagrants" is my own recent speculation.

[Vulcan]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

A note on Viking ships:

 

The Viking knarr was, for all that it also carried oars, the best sailing vessel of it's time. The clinker construction and shallow draft meant a lot of air got swept along underneath the hull, reducing water drag. The broad beam allowed for a surprisingly large sail to be carried. And the sail could be rigged in a fore-and-aft configuration that allowed the knarr to point amazingly well into the wind. A modern reconstruction of a knarr raced an equivalent modern sailboat, and kept up very well - didn't win, of course, but the guys in the modern boat were sweating on the downwind leg.

[Old Man]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Strictly necromantic bump on this thread so I can find it more easily. Trying to come up with plausible' date=' workable maritime stuff for a fantastic analogy to the tech that existed in North Sea area about 1250 AD.[/quote']

 

Oddly enough, I just last night finished the chapter on ships and seamanship in the Vikings book I'm reading. Incredibly, they had actual cargo ships as well as the militarily-oriented longships that we all know about. These cargo ships were like stubby longships with additional decks fore and aft, and fewer oars. I can't remember what they were called. This particular book also points out that while the Vikings probably were fairly sophisticated at navigation, they didn't really have to be--the Baltic and North Sea aren't the Pacific, most trips took little more than a day, and just knowing the currents and winds was usually enough.

[Ragnarok]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Bump for future reference.

 

Good stuff here.

[Cancer]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

IMHO [Humble --I slay me!]' date=' people tend to go at this the wrong way. You want to worry about the bit where people get on and off ships, [i']then [/i]about the ships. ...

 

I tend to agree with you, but I decided on this particular historical tech level because of effects downstream of it (pun acknowledged). I didn't want effective naval warfare in the game-world, and you can't get that with single-masted vessels. So having made that decision, I'm researching what goes with that, in terms of tech, and geography, and so on.

 

I've already come to the conclusion that I need to alter the maps I've created, and spread things out more. Haven't decided whether I'll just change the scale (so the landmasses will grow in direct proportion with the waterways) or keep the landmasses' sizes fixed and move them apart on the map.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Oddly enough' date=' I just last night finished the chapter on ships and seamanship in the Vikings book I'm reading. Incredibly, they had actual cargo ships as well as the militarily-oriented longships that we all know about. These cargo ships were like stubby longships with additional decks fore and aft, and fewer oars. I can't remember what they were called. [/quote']

 

Knorrs, IIRC.

[Old Man]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

That's the word.

[L. Marcus]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Knarr. With an A.

 

Or that may be dialect . . .

 

"Knorr" is the shape of the tail of a happy pig.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Looks like Wikipedia has it listed under Knarr, but also list alternate spellings of Knorr and Knörr.

 

But....you guys have a word for the shape of a happy pig's tail?!??!

[L. Marcus]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Yup. Pigs are important.

[Ragnarok]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Yup. Pigs are important.

 

 

Of course. Where else would I get bacon?

[L. Marcus]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

I rest my face.

[Cancer]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Long pig jowl bacon, then.

[Markdoc]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Oddly enough' date=' I just last night finished the chapter on ships and seamanship in the Vikings book I'm reading. Incredibly, they had actual cargo ships as well as the militarily-oriented longships that we all know about. These cargo ships were like stubby longships with additional decks fore and aft, and fewer oars. I can't remember what they were called.[/quote']

 

There are multiple sorts of merchant ships. The larger, tubbier ones were called knarr - as opposed to what we call longships, which were caled seid. Smaller light, trading ships (the sort of thing that might be used by a wealthy farmer to ship goods, rather than a professional merchant's vessel) were called byrding - they were light and fast - capable of being beached anywhere. The military equivalent was slightly larger - called snekke, they could carry about 30 men and were the smallest longships. There are multiple other types of viking ships - ferja are midsized fishing/transport vessels, while karve are broad beamed vessels used for transporting livestock. There were probably other types we don't know about.

 

This particular book also points out that while the Vikings probably were fairly sophisticated at navigation' date=' they didn't really have to be--the Baltic and North Sea aren't the Pacific, most trips took little more than a day, and just knowing the currents and winds was usually enough.[/quote']

 

Heh - knowing currents and winds was essential - but voyages were often much, much more than a day. There's a reconstructed longship (a seid) called havhinsten (sea stallion) which is making a series of voyages based on what we know of viking sea routes (website here). Over the last few years we have watched it being constructed in the traditional fashion, then sailed. A friend of mine (actually a patent lawyer from our institute) is one of the crew, who are almost all volunteers. Recently it went to Ireland (6 weeks to get there, 8 weeks to get back). We were there to see it off and my wife watched it return (I was in India). The traditional route is not down the coast but north from Denmark to Norway across the North sea and then direct west across the entire width of the north sea to Scotland, around Scotland and across the Irish Sea to Ireland. The bulk of the distance is covered far from land - and takes up only a small portion of the actual travel time.

 

For good reason - sailing cose to the coast in a ship that can't sail easily into the wind is very dangerous. Get an onshore wind and and you could end up getting wrecked. As a result, sailing back in those days (and today, if you are sailing a seid) goes like this. Wait for a good wind. This may take days, even weeks. When you get a wind, go like the clappers to try to reach your destination. Land and wait there for a wind. When you get that, go like the clappers. Repeat as needed. If you really have to move, and the wind isn't with you .... man the oars. That's hard work and slow. Basically travel by sail back then was a series of fits and starts. You might spend more time sitting ashore and waiting than actually sailing and traditional sailing routes were determined by the reliability of certain winds. Which is why - if you look at maps - these routes often seem weird: to get to Ireland for example (West and South) the traditional route is via Norway (North and East).

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Yup. Pigs are important.

 

 

'nuff said.

 

cheers, Mark

[L. Marcus]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Wulffmorgenthaler FTW!

[Cancer]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

I'd laugh, but my own British ancestors would fit in there perfectly if you edited in sheep and wool for pork and bacon in that 'toon. Probably you'd have to swap 'repression' for 'humiliation', too.

[Old Man]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Anyway, the book I'm reading is:

 

The Vikings: Revised Edition

 

The Vikings: Revised Edition by Else Roesdahl (Paperback - Jan 1, 1999)

Buy new: $17.00 $11.56 54 Used & new from $5.69

Get it by Wednesday, Aug 20 if you order in the next 23 hours and choose one-day shipping.

Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.

4.7 out of 5 stars (11)

Books: See all 222 items

 

 

It's dry, but very informative.

[Markdoc]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

It's dry, but very informative.

 

A lot of the best roleplaying source material is like that

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Ships of the Dark Ages and Medieval Period

 

Wulffmorgenthaler FTW!